Why Oasis women? By Jackie McGill
I thought I would write down the vision God has laid on my heart for Oasis Women’s Ministries.
The aim is that women are free to be all that God has for them. So often we limit ourselves or think that others limit us and this is not God’s plan.
Last summer I felt God challenge me directly on the issue of discipleship. He asked me ‘Who are you discipling now?’ and the answer was no one really. This stayed as a weight on my heart. I spoke to some of the leaders in Oasis but there was no particular avenue through which to channel this. Deborah Grey challenged me further by asking whether God was just speaking to me personally or whether this has wider implications for Oasis. ‘Just me’ I replied naively.
As I waited and thought and prayed I had a growing conviction that God was leading me to a bigger picture. Titus 2 v3-5 says “teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4 Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.”
A slightly cringy passage in this day and age perhaps? Actually I discovered that many of the women in Oasis would like someone to walk alongside them and encourage them in their walk with God. Others would love to get alongside other women but are not really sure how to build these relationships. Over the years I have has a number of what I would call co-dicsipleship relationships where I have met up with women to encourage or to be encouraged. In every case we both learn from the other, no matter who the more mature woman was supposed to be. In other words, as we seek to disciple others, God always speaks to us and deals with our own heart.
Proverbs 27 v17 says “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”
So watch this space as we begin to workout this vision.
